Author Archive: The Crazy Crone

I dithered about producing this video then decided I had to be honest – this is how I feel about white supremacism and Trump’s alliance with the Extreme Right because I can remember what the Nazi era with its policy of racial superiority was like. Trump is a fascist and the time to speak up and resist is right now, not further down the line.

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This piece of digital art was created from a close-up of the patterns on one of my turquoise pendants. It illustrates the power of water, the hidden energy and its importance in sustaining life on this planet.

I created this image as part of standing in solidarity today with those protestors at Standing Rock, Dakota, defending sacred land and clean water from the pollution of an oil pipeline through their wildlands.

I also wore a dress of green and black – green for the lushness of the earth, black for the dirt beneath the sacred land – as well as a larimar pendant (larimar is associated with water energy) and a light green turquoise pendant, again to represent the green of the land.

I also created an energy mandala with a base of a turquoise scarf for water; a green vase (again for water) filled with small stones from river beds and topped with rose petals and heart shapes for the love and support people around the world are sending the Sioux people defending their sacred territory.

In front of the green vase is a rain stick to invoke rain and cleansing of the area; in the centre is a Cave Pearl, formed when calcite drops onto the surface of water in caves and then drops to the bottom of the water as the calcite deposits form an ever heavier ball (these cave pearls are collected by Native Americans under licence). Behind the Cave Pearl is a crystal of chrysocolla, for me the rock of the goddess Aphrodite who rose from the sea south of the island of Cyprus where I live.

The Cave Pearl is standing on a photo of a bison to celebrate and acknowledge the sudden and unexpected arrival of a herd of bison at Standing Rock. On the left corner is a Peruvian turquoise stone with the rune marking Kano, representing opening/new opportunities; on the right-hand corner is a fossilised whale inner ear bone to represent the energies of the seas from time immemorial to time immemorial.

At each side of the cave pearl are rune stones, collected from a magical cove on the north-east coast of Scotland and full of Fae energy. I painted the runes myself and on the left, top to bottom, are: Uruz for strength; Peorth for initiation, the unknown; Algiz for protection. on the right are: Kano, for opening, opportunity; Dagaz for breakthrough, and Teiwaz, warrior.

I also created an additional image for the energy mandala, it felt like it represented the undercurrents of what is happening, and the magic supporting the protestors, even if it isn’t immediately visible.

Halloween is the modern-day, commercial version of the ancient ritual of Samhain. It’s a pagan festival celebrating the end of autumn and the beginning of winter, the dark season.

But it’s also a time of the year when the veil between the living and our ancestors is believed to be thinnest.

So this year, on 30th October, the day before Samhain, I feel drawn to honour the call to join a world-wide vigil – of the living and our ancestral beings – for those at Standing Rock in America who are defending ancestral land from the laying of the Dakota Access Pipeline, being constructed by Dakota Access and Energy Transfer Partners.

These fields in central North Dakota are where the pipeline would cross the longest river in the United States—the Missouri River—putting drinking water at risk for millions of people and desecrating sacred indigenous land.

Appalling state-sanctioned violence has been unleashed against Native Americans seeking to protect their sacred land from the installation of the pipeline, which was was redirected from an area where it was most likely to impact white people and inflicted on Lakota land guaranteed to the Native Americans of that area under the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1851.

The people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation are often called Sioux. They are the members of the Dakota and Lakota Nations.

This violence against Native American protestors and their supporters engaged in peaceful protest is a continuation of the violent suppression of Native Americans since the first white invasion in the 1600s.

It stands in stark contract to kid glove treatment meted out to the armed thugs who carried out an armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge for 41 days and who recently were acquitted at trial, patently because they were white and right-wing reactionaries.

As the commentator Robert Reich put it: “On the same day that a jury acquitted the Bundy brothers and their fellow protesters for taking over federal land in Oregon last January, police in North Dakota today used pepper spray gas and a painful high-pitched siren, and then arrested 117 Native Americans and others for protesting a private oil pipeline across land they say belongs to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe under a 19th-century treaty. In other words, it’s fine to mount an armed insurrection so your cattle can graze for free on federal land, but not if you want to protect your sacred burial ground or your only source of water from a private for-profit oil pipeline company.”

I think what is absolutely brilliant is the arrival of a herd of bison out of nowhere, a message of support from Mother Nature, which reinforces the traditional hold the Lakota have on their land:

On the same day that a jury acquitted the Bundy brothers and their fellow protesters for taking over federal land in Oregon last January, police in North Dakota used pepper spray gas and a painful high-pitched siren, and then arrested 117 Native Americans and others for protesting a private oil pipeline across land they say belongs to the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe under a 19th-century treaty. The people of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribal Nation are often called Sioux. They are the members of the Dakota and Lakota Nations.

I’ve put in links below to add more details on events at Standing Rock, but I hope that the widest possible support is extended planet-wide for Native Americans standing up for their rights, because the violence perpetrated against them is the same violence which is perpetrated against any individuals or groups who stand up to the forces of the Establishment for the rights of the ordinary people.

Those of you who don’t live in the UK might not have heard of Nigel Farage. Lucky you!

Farage was and maybe still is the leader of the UK Independence Party, dedicated to taking Britain back to the good old days, when men were men and women knew their place – barefoot and pregnant.

Nige is Yesterday’s Man – one who wants to turn the tide of history back to when the UK was white, racist, misogynist and homophobic. You know, like “Make America Great” again is a euphemism for a US where women knew their place, white supremacy was the rule, blacks were kept separated or lynched and homosexuals could be persecuted, beaten up or murdered with impunity.

So Little Nige, at present being a complete sycophant to and cheerleader for the serial sex criminal, Donald Trump, has popped up in Trump’s defence, after vulgar comments made by the man in 2005 surfaced publicly, to say:

“Look, this is alpha male boasting. It’s the kind of thing, if we are being honest, that men do. They sit around and have a drink and they talk like this”.

Firstly, I’ve got far more faith in most men that they’re better than Nige’s demeaning idea of what most men are like. But if these are the sort of men that Nige does associate with, it just show him up as a creep of the first water. The crap that Little Nige peddled today says more about him as a throwback to times past when men could pound their chest, women were supposed to gaze adoringly up at their heroes, domestic violence was fine, abortion was illegal, and single women were sent to Coventry if they fell pregnant or they were forced to give their kids up for adoption.

Little Nige is perpetuating the myth of the locker room, boys will be boys, lad culture and all the other euphemisms which boil down to one thing: the idolatry, justification and perpetuation of rape culture. Because “alpha male boasting” isn’t a joke: it’s about rape, sexual assault, the victimisation of women, and the reduction of women to sex objects without any rights in relation to matters of sexual assault and rape.

You can see this when frat rape surfaces in the US, the woman raped is portrayed as a slut while the media and courts worry about the future of these wonderful athletes. It can be seen when a young guy rapes a woman behind dustbins, gets caught in the act, is rich and gets six months in jail even after he’s caught lying about his history of alcohol abuse.In the UK, a woman who was raped by a footballer was vilified and victimised, while the footballer – a jock – was supported and idolised by women, for god’s sake.

And so it goes on – you could list pages of these sorts of assaults where the perpetrator is portrayed as a hero while the women raped ends up getting doubly victimised by being portrayed as the seducer and the scarlet woman.

So I’m afraid when Yesterday’s Man, Nigel Farage, starts downplaying the truly disgusting comments by Donald Trump and continues to support a serial sex offender, he disqualifies himself to be a leader of any political party and to be regarded with any kind of respect. He’s a true Yesterday’s Man: irrelevant and past his use-by date.

Many years ago, in the early 1970s when I was an organiser for the Australian Union of Students, I had to take a couple of Palestinian students around campuses in Western Australia to talk about the Palestinian position in the Middle East.

In one forum, a young guy yelled out that no-one would want to rape a Palestinian woman in response to a comment about rape. I walked over to him, grabbed him by both ears, yanked his head forward and said: “If you make a similar comment again, I’ll rip your fucking head off”. He shut up. I might point out that I would have had a similar reaction if such a comment had been made about a Jewish woman. I don’t like racism or anti-semitism.

The next day a group of Zionist students cornered me in my office – and I use the term “cornered” as they filled the room and blocked the exit. Their leader told me they were disgusted by my bad language (okay to talk about rape but not swear apparently which says a lot about their attitude to women) which no lady would use. I pointed out to them that I wasn’t a lady which really took the wind out of their sails, much to my surprise. One of them said: “I never though the day would come when I’d hear a woman say she wasn’t a lady” and then they all slunk out of the room.

I’m making this point because yesterday I read a comment of Paul Ryan’s that “women are to be championed and revered”. Really? What a load of old baloney. Women can stand on their own two feet, thank you very much, Paul. We don’t need to be revered. We’re quite capable of being our own champions.

We need to be regarded as equals, supported in our choices, in our dignity, in equal opportunity, in young women not having to fear sexual assault or rape and then find themselves victimised as a slut when the guys who have raped her are considered jocks who’ve got their whole future ahead of them.

Women don’t need such condescending shit from a man who still hasn’t withdrawn his support from Trump. Criticising this serial sex offender and withdrawing an invitation to this disgusting guy isn’t good enough, it’s having two bob each way. But then when you look at Ryan’s record, you find out what a hypocritical slug the man is when he talks of championing and revering women:

Putting women on a pedestal, calling them ladies is, for misogynists like Ryan, a way of controlling and infantalising women, taking away their power and spruiking their need to be dependent on men who will take care of them, as if women were pathetic little creatures unable to survive on their own. “Lady” is a control mechanism to ensure you wear the “right” clothes, don’t cuss, play little, let men think they’re wonderful when you pretend to be dim and powerless, and make you feel guilty if you cross the sacred line between “lady” and “woman”.

So Ryan can take his championship and reverence of women and stick them where the sun don’t shine. Because he’s a hypocrite, a coward too afraid to disown Trump and his sick rape culture, and an enemy of women’s rights and women’s independence. He’s a hypocritical piece of shit who deserves contempt and disdain from all women who have too much pride and self-esteem to be suckered by this moronic, misogynist creep.

In the furore about the vulgar, crude comments by Donald Trump in 2005 about sexual assault of women whenever he feels like it (and sexual assault is the correct name for his godawful conduct), comments which were made just after Trump married for the second time, having divorced his first wife after having an affair with his now new wife (and later dumping her for another trophy wife, Melania Trump, I have to ask – why are people so surprised?

This disgusting behaviour matches his record of misogyny and serial philandering let alone all the other dreadful, insulting comments he’s made about black people, Mexicans, Muslim people, prisoners of war, immigrants, veterans suffering from PTSD, a Gold Star family daring to criticise him, dithering over the use of nuclear weapons and so much more.

But let’s be honest – he’s not alone in his demeaning and disgusting attitude towards women. He’s the end result of Republican male office-bearers repeatedly behaving like complete shits towards women – legitimising rape; legitimising pregnancy through rape by refusing abortions; introducing or trying to introduce legislation to control women’s reproductive rights; treating women like mindless bimbos.

Trump is the spawn of the underlying racist undermining of the first black president, Barack Obama, since he was first elected to office. Republicans Federally and at State level have treated the president with a contempt which is unprecedented, fanning the flames of bigotry and racism which Trump is simply echoing. None of them stood up to Trump with his birthing crap, simply endorsed it by not saying anything. The Republicans have well and truly shot themselves in the foot – a bunch of selfish, Establishment-serving losers.

And so many of those Republican gutless cowards criticise Trump’s comments but don’t have the moral strength to withdraw their endorsement of him. Thank god some Republican leaders believe he’s crossed a bridge too far and refuse to align themselves with this sorry excuse of a human being.

But also I’ve been reading responses by women which brush aside his misogyny, make the argument that it was so long ago and can’t the media find anything else to say about him.

I do have to say that I find it unfuckingbelievable that any woman worth her salt would demean herself by still aligning with someone who isn’t a joke, he’s an absolutely monstrous, excuse for a human being – a greedy, rapacious, sexist, vapid, cruel, horrible, stupid bully and thug.

I’m simply no longer staying quiet because, while I believe in the strength of the sisterhood, I’m going to call out women who sell themselves right down the drain when they back a woman-hating thug like Trump because they sell out the cause of all women when they choose to belittle themselves before such a disgusting woman-hating man.

Trumpettes, the rapaious right-wing harpy Ann Coulter and other women still slobbering over Trump:

Where the hell is your pride?

Where’s your self-esteem?

Where’s your self-respect?

Where did the wild you were born with go?

How did your wild get so hopelessly lost?

How did you get domesticated and so tamed that you’d vote for a woman-hating thug?

In Australia recently a white racist called Pauline Hanson was elected to the Senate. This woman first ran for office over 15 years ago on a racist fear campaign targeting Aboriginal and Asian people.

The racists crawled from under their rocks, happy to bash an Abo (abhorrent, racism term for Aborigines) and buy into fears that Asians would take over Australia.

The Asian invasion never happened.

But, undaunted by facts and the truth, Hanson popped up again to run yet another fear campaign, this time against Muslims in Australia. She lives for White Australia and the White Picket Fence, as well as spewing prejudice and hate. She has nothing more to offer Australians.

Similarly, in the United States, Donald Trump is also peddling fear, hate and division with his talk of “Make America Great Again”, his vicious comments about women, immigrants, Mexicans, Muslims, killing women and children in the Middle East if he thought their husbands might be in Daesh – you name it, he’s happy to take a swing at it.

And there are plenty more doing the same thing: Marine Le Pen in France; Geert Wilders in The Netherlands; the National Front and British National Party in the UK; Australian Liberty Alliance and Australia First in Australia; numerous extreme right-wing groups in the US.

The one characteristic of all the above, and other extreme right-wing organisations is that they are drawing a lot of support from people who are fed up with traditional party politics which have led to a dead-end. But they also get support from thugs and low-life who just like violence and hating “the other”. Because, hey, it’s easier to hate than it is to don our thinking cap, identify the real enemy, and sort out the mess which are capitalist economies these days.

I don’t know about other people but I’ve dithered in how to approach this whole issue of racism because I’m caught between something I espouse dearly, the power of love, and disgust at racist attitudes in people who may well be very nice people in their community but who have blinkers on when it comes to racism, or the Islamic religion, or the Jewish religion or disabled people – because where does the hate stop?

I dither because I make excuses for people – they have been screwed by the system; they’re angry at the loss of jobs; they are …. well, you can make a lot of excuses but I’m fed up making excuses.

Because today I saw two things: an image of a young Aboriginal boy in a Northern Territory prison in Australia with a hood over his face strapped into a chair which could have been photographed in the infamous Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq; and a movie about the death of a young black man, Emmett Till, in the US in the ‘fifties for the alleged crime of daring to whistle at a white woman. The image of that young man’s face after he’d been beaten to a pulp, had his eye gouged out, been shot in the head then thrown into the Tallahatchie river haunts me. His mother, bravely, insisted on an open coffin so that people could see the brutality enacted on this 14-year-old by his white kidnappers. A white jury found two men arrested for this savage crime not guilty after deliberating for less than an hour.

And frankly, I thought “Fuck it”. I’m over making excuses for racists. Absolutely over it. Because these people who scream horrible, racist slogans, who deface synagogues and mosques, who feel it’s okay to abuse on the streets people they don’t like are cowards. Yellow-bellied cowards. Gutless. Hateful people. I am so over making excuses.

If you abuse complete strangers because you’re too damned stupid to find out facts, to realise that the person you’re abusing is someone’s wife, husband, child, sister, mother or father, take the consequences. Take responsibility for being a hateful person.

I’m sick of hearing people with racist views whining about being called racist. It’s tough love, princes and princesses, so damned well suck it up. Racism leads to the Emmett Tills of the past. It leads to the police killings of black people in the US where white people make excuses for what is legalised murder. It leads to the resurgence of the Ku Klux Klan, a hateful organisation. It leads to the vigilante killing of a young, unarmed black man, Trayvon Martin, and then we watched as the murdered youth was trashed in the papers and his killer got off scot-free.

In Australia the result of racism is the horrendous picture of that young man in the NT prison. Aboriginal people are jailed out of all proportion to their presence in overall society, often because so-called “tough laws” deliberately target Aboriginal people who face discrimination, poverty, exclusion from society, and so on. I know this because I lived in Queensland where I heard a horrible “joke” denigrating that wonderful athlete Cathy Freeman the day after she won a gold medal in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

My husband heard a worker at the Ipswich power station complain that early settlers had fallen down on the job by not exterminating Aboriginal people altogether.I’ve heard a friend’s husband stating that asylum seekers and refugees arriving by boat should be thrown overboard and shot. I thought he was joking but, when I queried him, he meant it. I’ve lived in a small town in New South Wales where three children disappeared, the police turned a blind eye and reckoned the 4-year-old “went walkabout”, until it emerged that all three had been murdered. No-one has faced the white justice system for these killings.

I return to saying that racists are fundamentally weak, gutless people because they never have to face the consequences of their racism – the abuse on the street; the calls in the UK after the Brexit referendum to “go home where you came from”, being yelled at on buses, having insults screamed at you on the streets, as happened to Aboriginal kids twenty years ago when Hanson was on the rise, or be attacked and killed for the crime of being black of Muslim, kids getting scared to go to school in the US because they fear deportation, black kids terrified of being shot by police, women wearing the Muslim veil being abused or having their headscarf ripped off.

No, it’s okay to throw out racist insults because you don’t cop it yourself, racists. You can go on your smug, self-satisfied way, patting yourself on the back because you fancy yourself superior to those who are different to you. But as Shakespeare says, “Aye, there’s the rub” because racists, in their cowardice are inferior beings, living little, contemptible lives.

Quoting Shakespeare again, however: “To be or not to be”. You have the choice. You can wallow in shit, or you can rise up and open your heart to humanity and live your life with love not hate. The choice is yours but, if you choose racism, be prepared to face the consequences and don’t start pathetic whining because you elect to play little. Because eventually racism will be given an indecent burial and be careful, if you’re racist, that you don’t get buried along with the racism.

Like this:

I saw yet another politician in the past week state that attacks on the West are because Daesh/Al-Qaeda and other suchlike groups are deeply envious of Western ways of life.

I really roll my eyes when I see this sort of smug, self-satisfied, superficial and silly comment which is trying to pander to a domestic audience with superficial platitudes.

Because in essence it’s dangerous and misleading.

It totally ignores the real reasons behind terrorist attacks in Britain, the US and Europe which is that people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria and so on are fed up to the back teeth with getting the shit bombed out them and, when ordinary people get blown apart or their homes destroyed, hearing that they are “collateral damage”.

When that happens, is it any wonder that people get radicalised and want to retaliate? Don’t we in the West start spouting “search and destroy” when atrocities happen?

And no, I’m not condoning mass murders wherever they occur. I am suggesting that, until we start to try to understand the roots of the massacres which are happening so often in so many European cities, those bombings and shootings will continue.

Look at the situation last week. In Munich, nine people were shot to death. The papers are full of outrage about these murders.

Yes, they are terrible. But what we are suffering in the West is nothing like the slaughter happening in other countries.

At the same time as the mainstream media in the West were filling page upon page with photos and comment about the Munich deaths, 80 Shia Muslims were killed by a Daesh suicide bomber in Kabul, Afghanistan. Muslim deaths merited small mention in the media, perhaps the odd paragraph in the international news section, reinforcing to those alienated by Western interference in their countries that Western lives matter a whole lot more than those who are dying in far great numbers due to the catastrophe unleashed by the illegal invasion of Iraq.

I know it’s hard to know what to do when the world looks in chaos. But it does seem to me that we ordinary folk, people on the street, can take small steps to build solidarity with our friends in the Middle East, Eastern Europe and Asia by posting our sympathy and regrets on social media when atrocities happen in their nation to let them know that we stand in solidarity with them, they are not forgotten.

We need to stop automatically rushing to judgement and blaming Muslims for attacks by organisations like Daesh because they don’t represent Islam. In much the same way as we don’t blame all Christians for the actions of Blair and Bush who claim to be Christians and whose actions have led to the deaths of tens of thousands. We can support organisations which are helping shattered communities rebuild their lives. Or give a helping hand to refugees and asylum seekers – make sure your know the facts and stand up to those who try to spread ignorance, racism and hatred towards people driven out of their homeland by war, poverty, drought, repression, and so on.

And of course, we need to oppose war and fight for peace at every opportunity. Each of us, as individuals, needs to step up to the plate to take responsibility for what happens in our world. You can join organisations like AVAAZ, SumOfUs, Amnesty International, make donations to help causes which offer support for refugees and asylum seekers, support anti-war organisations, let politicians know what you feel and ensure they in turn know their actions are being monitored out in the community.

When we stand silent, we support the status quo and that status quo is in the process of falling apart.

When we speak up, we can make a difference to that status quo and contribute to a world where every life matters.

When I was in my first year at university, I went out with a student from Nigeria, Debo was his name. He was a nice guy, I enjoyed his company but I was well aware that, when we had a coffee in Bradford, we were looked at askance as a white girl with a black bloke. My mum went off her rocker when she found out I was going out with a Nigerian, but my dad intervened and told me to go out with whom I liked as long as the guy was a nice person. Colour, he said, didn’t come into it and that’s been my mantra ever since. It’s not your colour, creed, sexuality, height, weight or whatever – it’s what’s in your heart that counts.

As it happened, I ditched Debo shortly afterwards, not because of his colour but because he started talking about marriage and that frightened the life out of me. I’d dumped another very nice guy just before I went to university because he too started banging on about marriage which sent me haring in the opposite direction. I regret not telling my Nigerian boyfriend why I dumped him without explanation but I was a naive kid who was a virgin, had no idea about contraception, worried about his invitation back to his flat and likely sex, so I just fled the scene, so to speak.

Knowing myself through astrology now, I realise it’s because I have a lot of Aquarian in me and I don’t like being tied down or doing conventional things. In fact, it took 27 years living with my partner before I finally felt comfortable getting to the altar!

But looking back, it’s made me very glad about the luck of the draw when I was came into this world: I was born white (conventional colour) in England (safe country) and had parents who supported me in my schooling and encouraged me to go to university. I didn’t – and don’t – face discrimination because of my colour, I don’t face persecution because of my religious choices (none, by the way, if you’re interested) and I don’t get hate mail because I’m happily heterosexually married. I don’t get the heck bombed out of my home and country because I – luckily – don’t happen to live in a Middle Eastern country with oil and other resources.

Which is a roundabout way of returning to my previous post about “Make Britain/America Great/Safe Again”. Because the unspoken call behind this phrase is also for far too many “Make Britain/America white again.” Oh, and don’t let’s forget – make it okay for us to wage more Vietnam and Iraq wars so we can live in comfort with the resources we’re ripped out of other countries and turn a blind eye to the carnage we left behind.

It’s the elephant in the room, the racism (and imperialist hankerings) which all too often is the underlying message of those who want their country to go back to times past when men were white men, women were white women, the picket fence ruled supreme, kids behaved and everything was wonderful in a past viewed with rose-coloured glasses. You didn’t have social media so you didn’t have to view the godawful scenes of bombing people overseas, seeing kids shredded, buildings flattened, lives shattered by foreign (US/British & European) invasions and interventions. I am, by the way, referring only to the US, Britain and Europe because I’m focusing on white societies hankering for the past.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a President of the US treated with us much contempt and disrespect as Barack Obama. The Republicans – who use dog-whistling on racism at the drop of a hat – made the decision to undermine Obama at every opportunity. Too many claim they don’t like the current president’s policies when the fundamental problem is racism – a black man is in the White House and we (white people) want our (White) House back.

It was actually brought home to me just how much society has changed – for my mind, for the better – when I was watching the British police series, George Gently. Set in the 1960s, it tackles the discrimination that used to exist against homosexuals, black people, single mothers and other social mores of the time. It’s always excellent but it’s a reminder that things in the past were okay if you were white, but not if you were black, Irish, Jewish, single mother, poor, unemployed and so on.

Same in the US. What is going to make America great again? Lynchings of black people? Separate facilities for black and white people? Jim Crow? Discrimination against Native Americans? Sexual harassment unchecked? No protection for rape victims? Women dying from backyard abortions due to limited abortion services? Date rape? No problems. Domestic violence? Ladies, just grin and bear it. Bashing and trying to smash unions and undermine workers’ collective solidarity? And so on and so on.

In Australia, when women married they had to quit public service jobs. The treatment of Aboriginal people was appalling (not much better now). Single mums were in deep doggy-doo. Domestic violence was a taboo subject and too many women had to grin and bear the abuse. Paedophilia in the Catholic Church (and elsewhere) was swept under the carpet. So yes, it was okay for white men and less so for white women. But definitely not too crash-hot if you were black, Asian, a new migrant, and so on and so on.

Quite frankly I get fed up with the Love the Past Tribes. Society is about change and you can’t go back, nor should we want to go back to a white-washed path. It smacks of fear and cowardice.

Cowering behind the white picket line is playing little.

Get on your feet.

Face the future with courage. Accept that the rest of the world is fed up with the interference of white Western nations. Let’s sort out our own backyards – stop wasting money on wars and armaments, feed the poor, provide decent housing, education and health, pay living wages so people can live with dignity, build good quality infrastructure, stand up for legal rights and respectful treatment of all people but particularly those facing discrimination – black, LGBT people, Jewish people, Asian people, Hispanic people, Islamic people.

Have the guts to open your heart to people who aren’t like you if you’re white and heterosexual – because mixing with people of different colour, race, sexuality or religion enriches your life, widens your horizons and opens you to the power of loving humanity as a whole not just one tiny part which happens to be white.

I sometimes feel a bit schizophrenic you know – on my other blog (http://thecrazycrone.org) I post digital art of elemental nature spirits, which I can see in photos of trees, flowers, scenery, waterfalls, etc. And on this blog I bang on about matters political. I think I ought to rename it: “Metaphysics Meets Marxism 101”!

As I was saying in another post, I often wonder why half my life was spent as a Marxist and the next half as a metaphysical crystal worker and whacko artist! Perhaps it reflects the fact I’m a Libran Sun with Libra Rising which makes me able to see both sides of a situation.

Well, anyway, I find the Marxist part of my life very helpful because it’s made me curious and it’s helped me understand quite a bit of how capitalism works. I don’t buy the claptrap peddled by Western media, I like to hunt around the internet to look at what’s behind stories and what is really going on with the propaganda outlets (read: Establishment media) of Western governments.

But I also enjoy reading stuff in astrology about world events. For example, I was fascinated to read a book by the astrologer Liz Greene (The Outer Planets and Their Cycles) which records a lecture she gave where she mentioned the astrological situation surrounding the Soviet Union and predicted its collapse based on transits occurring in the national chart. This was a decade before the Soviet Union fell apart.

So now we’re looking at an astrological era where Uranus has been stirring things up with Aries and Pluto has been similarly doing a Trickster job with Capricorn. All sorts of upheavals have happened under the first duo – the Japanese earthquake happened just as Uranus was heading out of Pisces (which covers earthquakes) and into Aries which pretty much coincided with the tsunami. While these events where happening,Pluto in Capricorn has been heaving out all sorts of hidden information about governments, the Establishment, plutocrats, super-wealthy rip-off merchants, the banksters, oligarchies and huge corporations.

No wonder there’s uproar in so many nations around the world!

So, onwards and upwards, cupcakes!

“Make the US great again”.

“Make Britain great again”.

We’ve heard these words, haven’t we, with Trump running around squawking them in the US and those who voted for Brexit, leaving the European Union, in Britain?

Do you really, really think, though, that things can go back to empires past?

The reality is that there is no going back because “great” meant subjugating other nations to access their resources and cheap labour. The US and Britain are “great” because they have grown rich by ripping off/interfering in/bombing nations as the West has been ascendant.

It’s hard to lose your status as a major power in the world but that’s what is happening – we are in a uniquely historical time of watching a major power going into decline, the US, and a former great power hankering for times gone past and trying to ride on American coattails. In the process they are trying to hinder the rise of China (by having a few bob on India) and undermine Russia – resources, resources, resources!

This is reflected in demands to make Britain and the US “great” again, when in reality the “great” days are over and we are witnessing great shifts in spheres of influence.

Precisely because of that, the US is even more dangerous as it flails around trying to hang on to its former glories.

So one of the very good reasons not to get side-tracked into the good boy/bad boy Hussein argument I mentioned in my last post about control of oil being the driving force behind the Iraq war is because in the background, precisely the same arguments are being used to start fomenting war with Russia and China.

Putin’s a monster and expansionist, so the media and Western leaders say, which is a bit rich after the chaos of the illegal war in Iraq. The Chinese are control freaks because they don’t have a multi-party system (what? with the current parties in the US, Britain and Australia looking more like Tweedledum and Tweedledummer???) and are building bases in the South China seas. We are constantly told that these two nations are aggressive, expansionist and must be contained.

It’s not a popular thing to say, but China has always claimed sovereignty over Tibet. It was not a magically benign and spiritual country – it was feudal with Buddhism being used to enforce that feudalism – reincarnation was used to get people to accept their place in the order of things, with a grand time for the top dogs and misery for the serfs at the bottom of the heap. Am I a fan of everything China has done in Tibet? No. But the US and Western nations use Tibet as a propaganda tool and I’m deeply cynical of their motives. It’s also not likely that China will let go of Tibet when the US is waiting to step into the breach right on China’s doorstep.

Similarly, the reality of the Crimea is that it was part of Russia from 1783, when the Tsarist Empire annexed it a decade after defeating Ottoman forces in the Battle of Kozludzha, until 1954, it was handed over to the Ukraine by the particularly stupid Russian President, Kruschev, without asking the population but hey, when he chooses to act in a non-democratic manner, that’s okay when it favours the West!

Of course, if you say this, you’re then accused of being an apologist for Russia and China. Well, no, actually. It’s simply that if we take off our rose-coloured glasses about how wonderful the West is, the reality looks a bit different.

If you have a quick squizz around, you’ll see that the US is beefing up its proxy states, like Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Australia, Ukraine, which are all muscling up to China and Russia, ignoring – in the case of Russia – a tacit agreement that the Ukraine would be neutral (and don’t forget the CIA was up to its necks in the overthrow of Viktor Yanukovych leading to the country now being run by fascist nationalists), increasing US troops in Europe and countries bordering Russia, holding manoeuvres in waters close to China, US ships entering the Black Sea (a very provocative move) and generally encircling China and its Russian neighbour.

A lot of this information has disappeared under the welter of media coverage of the political circuses in the UK and the US. But it is a festering sore. And so I’d like to suggest that when you see hysterical reports about the expansionist goals of Russia and China, you might like to consider whether they’re truthful or not.

Because, in the final analysis, it’s the US, with backing from other Western nations, expanding towards the Soviet Union and creeping up on China. Russia has certainly moved into the Crimea but it was always Russian territory. And the Chinese are bopping around in the South China seas to protect its flank from US attempts to step up aggression on its doorstep.

The war drums are beating, albeit it fairly quietly at the moment. But don’t be fooled. The decline of one global power and the rise of another hold the seeds of global conflict. The fight for peace continues!